Practice skills: resilience (part 2 — the strategies)

As promised in Wednesday’s post on resilience, today’s topic is how to be resilient in the face of challenges and adverse events.
I recently worked with a client who tended to get stuck in things that had gone wrong or felt like slights to her. For instance, after opposing counsel accused her of acting in [...]

Practice skill: resilience (part 1)

I recently ran across a post by Ruthie on Ruthie’s Law inquiring, “Are you tough enough?” Ruthie suggests that:
The most successful lawyers are the ones who can accept that occassionally making mistakes is the price of progression, pick themselves up, move on and vow not to make the same mistake again. The most successful [...]

Pump up your writing!

My major (on my first trip through undergrad) was in English, with an emphasis on creative writing. When I asked my favorite writing professor for a recommendation to law school, she literally covered her face with her hands and started shaking her head. After determining that she had slid into despair and was [...]

Designing your personalized professional development plan

A lot of law firms are working to make their associate review processes more useful — and some are even succeeding. Over the last 2-3 years, it’s become quite vogue to require associates to design a professional development plan so that they and the firm can track their progress. Although the plan is [...]

“She stabbed me in the back!”

I’ve sometimes talked with lawyers (especially associates at large firms) who believe that another lawyer has stabbed them in the back: withheld critical information, misrepresented some aspect of the lawyer’s work to a more senior lawyer or client, or taken credit for the lawyer’s work. These experiences are enraging and painful, and it’s easy [...]

Inspiration for those considering a new career; can practice be easier?

One of the curious things about my coaching experience is that the topics that arise (with current and potential clients) seem to move in cycles. Right now, the top two issues on which I’m coaching are (1) making partner (long-term strategy as well as short-term “beefing up” in preparation for the decision and (2) [...]

Top firms for women or leaving the law: it’s all about perceived satisfaction

As announced in a flurry of law firm press releases yesterday, Working Mother Magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers LLC have announced the top 50 firms for women, as measured through “groundbreaking programs to help women strike a better work/life balance and climb to the top” and “implementing penalty-free flex schedules and mentoring, networking and leadership programs.” [...]

David Maister on business development

All writers have their favorite pieces, and while I wouldn’t necessarily elevate blogging to author status, I certainly have my favorite posts. One of them is Relationship or one-night stand: how law firms view associates(and clients). It’s a favorite for two reasons: first, it draws on an article about client development by David [...]

Habit: the enemy of entropy

I’m not a physicist (I can barely spell the word) but as I remember it, the second law of thermodynamics is that entropy, which for purposes of this post only might be a synonym for chaos or disorder, tends to increase. Another way of saying this is that systems tend to move from a [...]

Warning: first impressions linger!

I’ve been making a lot of calls this week, not only to lawyers and law firms but also to doctors’ offices and a variety of businesses, and I’ve discovered something disturbing. On a distressingly high number of these contacts (including some in-person contacts as well as phone calls), the people who greeted me and [...]